Welcome to WVnature.com

Hi! My name is Debbie Norman. I love God, my family, my country, my beautiful home state of West Virginia, reading, art, nature and photography. I have a physical disability but it does not have me. This is my nature journal of the world around me.

Category: Chickadee

None of the photos in this set are of good quality. But they capture the beginnings of the Eastern Bluebird nest that we had this year. These first photos were taken mostly through the glass in our kitchen window, which is double paned and not good for photographing through. As the weeks went by, the Bluebird couple began to get accustomed to me enough that I was able to get some photographs outside. This was not the case early on though.

This is the birdhouse that my kids made with my mom, their grandmother, and painted themselves. They really enjoyed watching these birds. We often home school at the kitchen table so there was a great deal of, “There is the bluebird again, Mommy!” said this year. They really loved watching them come and go.

It wasn’t your typical “bluebird box”, but that didn’t bother this pair. I was also surprised at how they started frequenting it almost as soon as it was hung.

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Despite the fact that the Bluebirds were clearly staking their claim to the house, other birds were still occasionally popping by to check it out. This little chickadee even hopped inside for a moment, before deciding to travel on.

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The top of our kid’s swing set became a regular sitting spot for the Bluebird to watch for insects then swoop down and grab them. He often took them to the female inside:

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He would often land (bug in mouth) on top of my husband’s grill before flying into their house. This always worried me that he might accidentally do it sometime when it was hot.

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Even a spring shower didn’t stop him from sitting on the swing set watching for bugs:

I have many more photos of the Bluebirds that I took over this spring, that I hope to share here.
But as usual I will stick to my posting as the post date the photos were taken on. And I am behind…. working on getting caught up as I can.

A little while after taking the photo of the tufted titmouse in the post below, I heard a loud bang on the front window. That distinct noise of a bird flying into glass. I got up to go look for it, and I saw this little chickadee. He (she?) made it back to the table where the seed is but it was just sitting there looking really stunned.

Here I complain so much about how pretty they are but how they rarely hold still long enough for good photos. But this is not what I wanted! LOL But this little tale has a happy ending, because I kept watching him and he stayed like this for approx. 15 minutes. Then seemed to start coming out of it. He looked around as if he were thinking, “Where in the world am I?” He looked so very confused for a few minutes. Then he noticed the seed beside of him, pecked at it just a little, then hopped about like he was fine and flew away. 🙂

Finally a crowd has found my new feeding spot. Sorry for the blurry spots in the photo, the only way I can photograph this spot is through double pane glass. The seed probably saw a crowd today due to impending snow… snow… snow… snow…. snow. I can sum up winter in WV this year… snow, snow and more snow. Oh and some rain and freezing rain thrown in for variety. Ugh

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A rare treat… a little Carolina Wren comes in for seed. They rarely pay any attention to the seed.
I LOVE Carolina Wrens. They are so cute and friendly. I’ve always liked them. But I fell in love with them when one adopted us and lived in our kitchen window for years.

For my last nature photo from 2009, one lone little chickadee.
I thought he looked so lonely sitting in the tree by the feeder today.
We’ve seen a drop off in bird traffic at the feeder since the snow started to melt off.